What is Shigellosis?

Shigellosis is a sudden intestinal illness that is a major public health problem in many developing countries, where it causes about 5 to 10 per cent of childhood diarrhea.

Shigella is a germ that causes a disease called shigellosis. Shigella species are aerobic gram-negative bacilli in the family Enterobacteriaceae. Children younger than 5 years are most likely to get shigellosis, but people from all age groups can get this disease. Most people with shigellosis will get better within 5 to 7 days without medical treatment.

Shigellosis are also influenced by nutritional status, and environmental factors affecting transmission such as rainfall and temperature. Shigella infections can occur throughout the year, but in most communities the incidence is highest when the weather is hot and dry. This may be because the scarcity of water limits handwashing and other hygiene measures that reduce transfer of the very small number of bacteria needed to cause infection.

Transmission is fecal-oral including direct person-to person contact. It is most likely to occur in children and those who fail to clean hands thoroughly, including under fingernails after defecation. Transmission occasionally occurs with sexual contact.

Health workers are usually aware of the number of shigellosis cases, because symptoms are severe, and therefore children with Shigella infections are more likely to be brought to hospitals or clinics. Case fatality rates, even in hospitalized cases of dysentery, are six to eight times greater than for watery diarrhea. Dysentery is associated with persistent diarrhea. In rural north India, for example, nearly a third of all persistent diarrheal episodes are dysenteric.

People who are sick with Shigella usually start experiencing symptoms 1 to 2 days after putting something in their mouth or swallowing something that has come into contact with the bacteria. Symptoms of shigellosis may include:
• Diarrhea (sometimes bloody)
• Fever
• Stomach pain
• Feeling the need to pass stool [poop] even when the bowels are empty

During disease epidemics caused by Shigella dysenteriae type 1, as many as one in ten people in affected communities will become infected, and as many as 10 to 15 per cent of these will die.
What is Shigellosis?

Foodborne viruses

Virus transmission can occur by the respiratory, fecal –oral and other routes. Foodborne viruses are an emerging food safety concern and represent a major cause of outbreaks of gastroenteritis. One of the reasons for this increased awareness is the improved laboratory capability to detect the groups of viruses causing gastroenteritis.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that each year there are 47.8 million episodes of foodborne illness and of those caused by known pathogens, 59% are caused by viruses.

Viruses need to enter living cells in order to replicate. Unlike bacteria, viruses cannot grow in food nor cause deterioration of the product.

Hepatitis A virus

Foodborne virus infection can be distinguished:
*Virus infections that cause gastroenteritis
*Virus infections that are enterically transmitted and cause hepatitis
*Virus infections that replicate in the human intestine but cause illness after they have been migrated to other organs.

Because foodborne virus infection may be asymptomatic, it is difficult to identify infected food handlers and separate them from food. Food handlers who appear healthy maybe be reservoirs of disease due to the long duration of asymptomatic shedding.

Heat represents the most efficient treatment to inactivate foodborne viruses and as a general rule, the higher the temperature, the higher and the faster the reduction in viral infectivity.
Foodborne viruses